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Featured Poem: William Blake, ‘I saw a chapel all of gold’
By Jonathan Roberts This poem is quintessential Blake. It comes from one of his notebooks known as 'The Rossetti Manuscript'…
Recommended Reads: The Swimming-Pool Library
Alan Hollinghurst is best-known for his Booker Prize-winning The Line of Beauty (superbly adapted for television by BBC Drama), a…
A Note on Patrick Kavanagh
Patrick Kavanagh, who died forty years ago today is one of the best-loved of all Irish writers and was effectively…
Why are our children not reading?
British children are not reading as much as they used to and in particular they are not reading for pleasure.…
Reader event: The Penny Readings
On the evening of Sunday 9th December, at St George's Hall in Liverpool, The Reader is hosting its fourth annual Penny Readings…
Biographer Stephen Gill: Wordsworth’s Prelude
The Reader’s outreach project, Get Into Reading, was kick-started by Melvyn Bragg’s Radio programme In Our Time. I was driving…
Featured Poem: Sonnet to William Wilberforce, Esq.
On November 26, 1731 the English poet and hymnodist William Cowper was born. Cowper trained as a lawyer but became…
Vernon Scannell 1922-2007
The poet Vernon Scannell died last weekend aged 85. He was a prolific writer: eight novels, autobiographical memoirs, works of…
Featured Anthology: Staying Alive – Brendan Kennelly
As the end of the week arrives and the last poem from our featured anthology Staying Alive is posted, it…
Featured Anthology: Staying Alive – Miroslav Holub
The fourth poet to feature from Staying Alive is Miroslav Holub, who was one of the Czech Republic's most important poets and also a leading scientist…
Featured Anthology: Staying Alive – David Constantine
As well as being a regular contributor to The Reader, David Constantine is a freelance writer, poet and translator. Possessing…
Featured Anthology: Staying Alive – Anne Stevenson
Anne Stevenson, a critic of Sylvia Plath and Elizabeth Bishop and a poet herself, was born in Cambridge in 1933…
